Markets in London

There is a lot of shopping in London, now the thing is where to look. Since there are an abundance of main streets and shopping centers for name brand clothes I was in search for a more alternative shops. I asked around and and it turns out that there are many hidden away or easily accessible if you know where to look. We were able to hit up two of the destinations recommended by the people we work with at the pub.

Borough Market

Near London Bridge tube stop you can walk for less than 3 minutes and bam you are in the midst of a market. Food aromas wafting through the air, fresh produce, healthy shakes, pastries, jams, organic makes of yummy everyday foods, don't forget fudge and honeycombs and lastly cheese stalls with samples. I don't think I covered all the basics but there it is a market that is available everyday for people from all around to buy food.

You have to check it out yourself when you are in the area, I hear that Saturday at lunch time is when the action happens.

If Borough Market was a small slice of London market life, then Camden Town is that slice writ large. Stall spill out across many huge rooms and swathes of yelling vendors, overcoming their boundaries and spreading out onto the street.

Camden Town

Take the tube to Camden Town when you exit the station you should be able to sense the large streets with stalls. From there they are outdoor catacombs of stalls arranged in a way where you can squeeze past, the thing is that comes with shopping like this are the vendors. They instantly break into sales mode, grabbing you sizes from anything you look at trying to herd you into trying on clothes. I get it most people who come here browse at the merchandise and never come back. I still just don't believe that being pushy is the way to sell, I have been in situations with restaurants in Rome yelling at every person to walking by to come in and eat. Through China store owners almost drag you in and won't let you go until you have bought something. Times are hard and we become more persistent. So don't take it personally and remember to try to haggle for a deal, the people here are happy to knock off a couple pounds for your purchase. 

The best thing about Camden Town is the fact that everything here has a very alternative/punk/Victorian feel to it. From there stalls upon stalls have set up with their fashion, knock offs,tattoo and piercing parlors, shoe shops, smoking paraphernalia you can find pretty much anything here.

Don't forget there are food stalls here, tonnes of restaurant and pubs around the area. 

Whilst you are here don't forget to visit The World's End a pub that is much bigger on the inside. They played metal the whole time we were there but it was late afternoon and it wasn't ear blaring. It was a nice change from the top 40 radio playlist that is found at more mainstream pubs. 

Aquarium and the London Eye

We wanted to see more of London and there were so many sights still left on my list to check off. I was suggested by the lady at the salon to visit the London Sea Life aquarium. On their website we were able to pick up a duo package for another attraction within London. Making it more economical to visit all these places since a single ticket costs more.

We decides to do the Sea Life and the London Eye, with our online tickets we were able to go through the priority line at sea life and skipped the line which is always a nice perk. Inside the aquarium are guides, tours and people bringing awareness to how human lives impact sea life. On top of that there are different species of all kinds of sea animals, even penguins.

During the walk through we were able to see giant sea turtles, sting rays of all assortments and walk through a tunnel that was fed through the large aquarium. I was luckily enough to touch a star fish during a presentation. If you like sea life it is worth the walk through.

I always love seeing these mini eels.

it is really hard to get a good picture of a sea horse.

I have many photos from the aquarium but I will let you see it yourself. Our London Eye pass is valid for one month after our first attraction visit. So we were thinking since it was valentines day there would be a huge line up for the ride. When we walked out at sunset there wasn't anyone, I guess it was dinner time so we hopped right on. No line or anything, it was a nice slow incline with about 6 other people a very calm overlook of the city. It didn't go high enough that you could see how vast London was but you could see all the nearby landmarks.

Us at Southbank

Me on the London Eye.

Happy V-Day Everyone! <3

The London Sea Life is located on Southbank which overlooks the River Thames home to great views of London.

Much love <3

Amsterdam Day 3

This morning we were able to get our tradition dutch breakfast including hagelslag 'dutch chocolate sprinkles' accompanied by bread and butter. On the side you can get cold cuts which I believe was ham at our hostel and sliced cheese. I took advantage of the granola and yogurt with your universal apple/orange juice/coffee/tea as a morning beverage. There was a note next to a breakfast cake 'try me with butter' it was one of those hey I haven't had this before, better try it moments. I myself was like cake and chocolate sprinkles for breakfast whats not to like?

We checked out of our room and went to the museum Rijks Museum where they featured Rambrandt works and the famous 'The Night Watch'. The building itself looks enormous from the outside but I guess the rooms indoors were quite large making the exhibit quite small when you walk through it. There were many other museums to visit Danny and I for once wasn't in the mindset to hop from museum to museum on this trip. Until next time.

The best way to stay in Amsterdam is to rent an apartment of your own with full facilities, since we currently live in staff housing and share our bathroom and kitchen we really appreciated having our own place. For 70 Euro a night we got a full flat!!

View from our apartment window.

A picture of the tram, car lane, bicycle lane as well!

Tonight I wanted to celebrate my birthday, we went to Liedse Square were all the bars are at. During our first drink of the evening we asked the bartender were they had live music there was one place around the corner but when we walked up they were playing Crazy train by Ozzy, so we wandered to the jazz bar Alto were there was a live band. The band 'The Soul Catcher' even gave me a birthday shout out after we spoke with them outside.Where found out that the band members were from all over the world! I had a wonderful evening out.

Amsterdam day 2

We woke up far too late to try out our free Dutch breakfast, made a note to try harder tomorrow.
Today we set out to have a wander around Amsterdam. We headed first through a street market that is on everyday before heading to the Museum District, which was dominated by the imposing figure of the Rijksmuseum. There are lots of museums are various sizes all centered around a big plaza where we found the I Amsterdam sign which you might have seen pictures of.

From the Museum Quarter we headed north towards the city center  passing through what our map told us was an arty district. It was full of pokey galleries, many of which were closed, and was less exciting than I expected it to be. From here we found ourselves in a more mainstream shopping area, and took shelter in the nearest coffee shop.

The Dolphin Coffee Shop was very different to the first place, much more commercialized for tourists. It was the most like an actual cafe of all the coffee shops we visited.

Later on in the night we took a walk into the infamous red light district to see what the fuss is all about, were we wandered into the sex museum. I don't believe this was the original museum it might have been just put together for the tourist but it was fin to see all the different cultures of sex represented in one building.

Snow White was showing cartoon porn!

RLD.

Making it to Amsterdam

It has been a teenage dream of mine to make it all the way to Amsterdam where I imagined life being tolerant   and filled with acceptance of what peoples hobbies were, are and will be.

The start of the day wasn't the best, I had one of those life blips that have been happening more often than not. Left my passport back in my room when we made it one train stop away from home. Luckily it wasn't that far, on our way back I picked up some Euros from the post office for an exchange of 1.08 should have been 1.13 if they didn't take their small fee.

Advice: If you are ever in east Sheen at the post office on the main street, watch out for the grumpiest individuals of all time. Not only are they not helpful they just seem so unhappy with their life careers. I have been in there a handful of times now and they just don't seem pleased, I am tempted to suggest a different profession (by contrast the man running a computing service out of the same room is a really jolly fellow, back during Christmas he cheerfully lent us some tape and scissors for a parcel when the nasty people from the Post Office side flatly refused and told us we had to buy some. Kudos to that guy).

Finally we made it out of Sheen off to Waterloo station, our standard transfer route into the city. From here we took the Waterloo & City line, which is the shortest Underground route and also the only one that is 100% underground. This took us to Bank, in the City of London (which is its own province basically consisting of the business district around Bank). We ended up at Liverpool St. Station, where we hopped on the overground train for an hour all the way to Southend Airport. The airport with only three departure gates, nothing fancy but does the job.

After a very quick 40 minute flight we arrived in Amsterdam a blanket of snow on the ground to greet us. When we walked off of the plane it was about the same temperature as London, -3C not too bad.

Now this was the hard part a serious lack of help from the train station, needing to buy a ticket to get into Amsterdam central station. First thing we did was try to buy a ticket from the ticket machine but it was card only, so off to the ticket/information. A lady sold us one way tickets for about 7 Euros and told us Platform 1 or 2. Okay I thought that was helpful information until we got down to the station and realized that everything was in Dutch. After a good 20 minute wait and reading all the signs available we got on the right train into city centre. Nobody checked our tickets so I don't know if it was necessary for us to purchase a ticket into town.

The next bit was even harder to navigate, Amsterdam runs a bus and tram service for public transportation. We were able to buy a 3 day pass for 16 Euros that gives us unlimited public transport. Now I didn't notice that we were station B verses station A where the 25 Kennedy line was meant to stop, hindering our arrival time by a little bit. It took much longer than hoped to get on the right tram.

Now the tram has no English on it, just a tram map and a small electronic map telling you the upcoming 4 stops. We didn't hear the name of the stop that we were suppose to depart at so we went all the way to the end. The tram diver wasn't very helpful and tried to hustle the tourist that were lost like us from one side of the tram to the other. I had no idea what was going on. We ended up staying on the same tram back around to our proper stop and finally found our hostel. Bicycle Hotel has a little lobby were they have a couple public computers, the breakfast room and the reception desk. The gentleman let us in with a buzz at the door gave us a map and a key to our room. Directed us to the nearest coffee shop (Papillon) and to a small restaurant district.

Finally we were able to drop off our things, find a smoke and start relaxing into the evening. After that we were able to find some late Thai place that sold us some noodles and curry. Too bad she was the whole front of house staff just like we stepped into Thailand. After another smoke we hit up the Supermarkt, which is the stoner's dream store; wall to wall snacks with every variety of flavours and colours ignite all your munchie senses. There is no way you could not buy something after walking into a place like that.